Emotional Variation and Fertility Behavior

Emotional influences on fertility behaviors are an understudied topic that may offer a clear explanation of why many couples choose to have children even when childbearing is not economically rational. With setting-specific measures of the husband-wife emotional bond appropriate for large-scale popu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inDemography Vol. 54; no. 2; pp. 437 - 458
Main Authors Axinn, William G., Ghimire, Dirgha J., Smith-Greenaway, Emily
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Population Association of America (Springer) 01.04.2017
Springer US
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Arranged marriage
Behavior
Birth control
Childbirth & labor
Children
Contraception
Contraception - psychology
Contraception Behavior - psychology
Contraceptives
Correlation analysis
Couples
Demography
Emotional behavior
Emotional factors
Emotions
Ethnography
Families & family life
Family planning
Family Planning Services
Female
Fertility
FERTILITY AND FAMILY
Geography
Hinduism
Humans
Husbands
Interpersonal Relations
Investigations
Love
Male
Marriage
Medicine/Public Health
Middle Aged
Nepal
Panel data
Personal relationships
Population
Population Economics
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic Factors
Sociology
Spouses - psychology
Studies
Wives
Young Adult
United States > US
Nepal
Chicago Illinois
Contraceptive use
Family change
Fertility limitation
Spousal emotions
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Summary:Emotional influences on fertility behaviors are an understudied topic that may offer a clear explanation of why many couples choose to have children even when childbearing is not economically rational. With setting-specific measures of the husband-wife emotional bond appropriate for large-scale population research matched with data from a long-term panel study, we have the empirical tools to provide a test of the influence of emotional factors on contraceptive use to limit fertility. This article presents those tests. We use long-term, multilevel community and family panel data to demonstrate that the variance in levels of husband-wife emotional bond is significantly associated with their subsequent use of contraception to avert births. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of this intriguing new result.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:0070-3370
1533-7790
DOI:10.1007/s13524-017-0555-5